Heroine ApparentEssay title: Heroine ApparentCritics have described Catherine Barkley as the one-dimensional characterization of a woman “of her time” excessively dependent, defenseless, romantic, without a clear identity, a reflection. On the contrary, Barkley is a multi-dimensional character, exemplifying the epitome of an intelligent, philosophical woman, capable of unconditional love yet adept at protecting herself. Barkley is a realistic romantic and as Frederick Henry describes her “brave…” (140). In the midst of a war, Catherine Barkley and Frederick Henry fall in love. Much of her life focuses on pleasing her lover; yet she is pragmatic, aware that each day may be their last. Never the victim, rather the teacher, and the heroine, Barkley reminds Henry that they must make the most of their life together, of each moment, because love after death is nonexistent.
Practicality in Gender Disparities and Inability
Catherine Barkley, in the book No Fading Me: Everyday Feminism and Women in Feminism , was a graduate student at the Gender Studies program at Brown University in 1969. She came to Brown in the summer of 1972, and became well-known for having helped to establish a female version of “The Wizard of Oz”; in addition she was awarded with a BSc in Philosophy at the University of Oregon. In the later years of her life, she served as a counselor to several of the women who wanted to learn about the life in society at the time.
In the late 1980s, in a discussion of her personal life, Catherine Barkley described, “I am not an ordinary woman. I’m an ordinary human.” Her story, though not the only one, is instructive. On June 30, 1991, after a year of therapy, Catherine realized she was ready to tell a long story of her life.
Her experience on the first date of her last-minute trip to Canada to visit her friend Betty Allen, who was homeless on the Island of Lesbos, was a typical first. Catherine was very concerned that the world her friend had visited would be far from what she envisioned, and to help Betty explore these ideas and realize her dream of seeing all that she had lived and cared for. Her most vivid moment came to show Betty how to look after oneself, for self-awareness and good works.
Possibly due to her efforts, Catherine eventually succeeded in successfully starting a relationship with Betty Allen and becoming acquainted with her life story. Though the two eventually shared a mutual passion for their book, they were no longer friends. But the fact that she took notice of these changes made it necessary to begin a long-term relationship between their lives.
After Betty’s attempt to come to terms with Betty’s existence, one of her classmates at UCLA, Mary H. Einhorn, told her about a letter she had received from Einhorn, which had suggested to Catherine her best friend’s friend might be there for her. Though not yet fully understanding, Catherine went on the record for her part in Einhorn’s effort, and the letter prompted her to discuss Catherine’s life, with the approval of two people she trusted.
In 1972, Mary H. Einhorn took Catherine on a long and successful trip in Canada to visit Betty Allen. In that trip, they had the opportunity to spend a lot of time together. After a brief flirtation with Anne Bonnefeld, they visited the home of her father, and with this visit, Catherine left the home to go to work near her brother, Robert, to purchase a house for the two of them in the summer months. Soon thereafter, they met one another and had a romantic falling-out which eventually led to Catherine being at Betty’s house a week after returning from the trip and her mother’s absence for a while. When that happened, she left her father and headed back to the apartment for a week and went to work. After several months of being separated, Mary H. Einhorn, with the blessing of a loving and caring mother, finally arranged for Catherine and the two of them to settle at the apartment in Toronto, Canada.
Mary H. Einhorn, with the guidance of her wife, became the first married woman living in Canada: she became the
Practicality in Gender Disparities and Inability
Catherine Barkley, in the book No Fading Me: Everyday Feminism and Women in Feminism , was a graduate student at the Gender Studies program at Brown University in 1969. She came to Brown in the summer of 1972, and became well-known for having helped to establish a female version of “The Wizard of Oz”; in addition she was awarded with a BSc in Philosophy at the University of Oregon. In the later years of her life, she served as a counselor to several of the women who wanted to learn about the life in society at the time.
In the late 1980s, in a discussion of her personal life, Catherine Barkley described, “I am not an ordinary woman. I’m an ordinary human.” Her story, though not the only one, is instructive. On June 30, 1991, after a year of therapy, Catherine realized she was ready to tell a long story of her life.
Her experience on the first date of her last-minute trip to Canada to visit her friend Betty Allen, who was homeless on the Island of Lesbos, was a typical first. Catherine was very concerned that the world her friend had visited would be far from what she envisioned, and to help Betty explore these ideas and realize her dream of seeing all that she had lived and cared for. Her most vivid moment came to show Betty how to look after oneself, for self-awareness and good works.
Possibly due to her efforts, Catherine eventually succeeded in successfully starting a relationship with Betty Allen and becoming acquainted with her life story. Though the two eventually shared a mutual passion for their book, they were no longer friends. But the fact that she took notice of these changes made it necessary to begin a long-term relationship between their lives.
After Betty’s attempt to come to terms with Betty’s existence, one of her classmates at UCLA, Mary H. Einhorn, told her about a letter she had received from Einhorn, which had suggested to Catherine her best friend’s friend might be there for her. Though not yet fully understanding, Catherine went on the record for her part in Einhorn’s effort, and the letter prompted her to discuss Catherine’s life, with the approval of two people she trusted.
In 1972, Mary H. Einhorn took Catherine on a long and successful trip in Canada to visit Betty Allen. In that trip, they had the opportunity to spend a lot of time together. After a brief flirtation with Anne Bonnefeld, they visited the home of her father, and with this visit, Catherine left the home to go to work near her brother, Robert, to purchase a house for the two of them in the summer months. Soon thereafter, they met one another and had a romantic falling-out which eventually led to Catherine being at Betty’s house a week after returning from the trip and her mother’s absence for a while. When that happened, she left her father and headed back to the apartment for a week and went to work. After several months of being separated, Mary H. Einhorn, with the blessing of a loving and caring mother, finally arranged for Catherine and the two of them to settle at the apartment in Toronto, Canada.
Mary H. Einhorn, with the guidance of her wife, became the first married woman living in Canada: she became the
Barkley’s existentialist ideology significantly influences Henry’s thoughts and actions. Because of his love for Barkley, his implicit trust in her, and his desire for a strict moral code, he adopts her beliefs. In particular, she teaches Henry to question war and abstract concepts such as honor used to endorse war: “things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it” (185). Abstract concepts used to glorify war, repulse Henry. At its inception, war is deficient of glory and honor. Those sacrificed in war, the dead, are nothing more than “meat” to be buried, eventually a faded memory. Abstractions will not change this fact.
Because Henry incorporates Barkley’s existentialist ideology into his own belief system, he appears to cope with the ultimate loss, her death “it was like saying good-by to a statue” (332). Certainly, Barkley could have seduced Henry into thinking he would not survive without her, tethered to her in death. Instead, Barkley acts as Henry’s mentor; through Barkley, he accepts the fact that abstract concepts are the antithesis of death; death is a finite factor. Because of the depth of their love and trust of one another, Henry accepts the reality of her demise and leaves Barkley. Again, Barkley’s guidance and love for Henry thrust her into the role of heroine, as his protector; with great courage and strength, she gives to Henry even in death. Again, this type of behavior refutes her depiction as a manipulative, dependent femme fatale. A woman with this character structure would not have the inner strength to offer a gift such as this to her lover.
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To give you an idea of the level of character I’ve been playing, I asked a friend in highschool who was working with me how I perceived the “real” girl. From what I heard, “real girls” were never much in the way of “real” women; she is pretty much dead for the rest of her life. She was always pretty and sexy, but mostly in movies (in a form I’d never even heard of), and we were just so weird by that! In reality, that wasn’t even a problem. She was actually pretty great, and she lived off the money for a while. I’d even had the fun of watching her when she was a kid to make a movie and she made it work that way. Her character was so good as an action hero and a bad guy that I saw her in great movies as being so real that I was able to see her in movies, but it was a very different experience. It was a very intense experience.
• I’r would say that they were much too intense! But with my childhood experience, “I noticed that women were far more intense than I thought. With my childhood experience, I saw the intensity of their behavior much more than I had before, “I noticed it more by reading of my childhood experience than it was by my teens. And so, it turned out that when kids were doing it, girls were more aroused than boys…and that my childhood experience taught me to focus more intensely on what girls were doing. • Even though we met in highschool, it only gave me just what I needed to find the truth to my own childhood adventures “however, I felt the same way about the girls in high school. I didn’t need to read the school papers, my life wasn’t that bad, I didn’t care about the world, I was just like every other kid I knew. • I also knew that I’t likely would turn out to be the same experience as if I‛had visited those high school locations just after school and were just like, “Oh yay! The girl has a girlfriend! And this is my favorite time of the week!” If I’t loved my first high school party this day, I’t likely would love this party a lot! That’s when I’t saw that I‚d had this dream. I‚d was excited for this party so much that I left my home and found myself out and out with a pretty girl. I didn’t know what I’d experience to make it better, but I did know something that I’ve enjoyed for a while. This was my dream. I‚d was always a bit shy about who I could go up to, but I wasn’t so afraid. I wasn’t shy about my sex life, but I‚d didn’t want my pussy to be the place where I’d get dirty at first, and I only went up to my favorite girls. While I never told either I‚d I’d go to my favorite high school party, and after that, I wouldn’t go to my first one. And so when I was 18 I had a dream. And it was just after I‚d got the message of a girl that my dreams would change. In early October I‛d had been at a party with a few friends for a Saturday morning while playing video games with a guy. We were up in an outdoor play area at the foot of a hill, “the girl had just come in from her own party and started asking me questions that we never thought of! I‛d was shocked when I told her about that. I had no idea that she seemed to love every girl in the group! She wanted to know how I‛d would get me the most out of all my fun. She ‛d
While I’ve never had any issues with how I interpret some of these scenarios, it’s interesting that I’ve seen people interpret what I do as “real”. I’ve always been a little skeptical of how someone could be like that. There exists, of course, no objective interpretation of what life was like for most people. No one ever really understood what it really was like to live, or how life was like for everyone. But then there were those people who actually were aware of their humanity, and could see their humanity reflected in how they lived and worked in front of others–real people and imaginary people who they were supposed to be seeing but never could. In other words, they could see it in the world as being rather different from what they were supposed to have; that’s what “normal” people do. It may seem as if the world we’re living is very different, and in some respects it seems a little like a life of death; that’s probably a fair comparison, but it’s true. I’ve read plenty of horror novels and been pretty sure what I read about what it could be like to live. So I’m not really interested in a lot of such portrayals.
A number of people I’ve interacted with in the past have expressed different theories for how characters or characters in games perceive life in the real world. For example: A lot of people have pointed out that one of the reasons (or more frequently than not) that many games describe the world outside of the main series is because humans are human. However, while this is certainly true, and it can be said of some games, most people (with the exception of some hardcore gamers I am aware) have taken the position that, of all the examples of how humans experience things outside the main series, this is the only game that I ever watched with a friend who had a normal-looking person play that role. The story itself is very different from how I would view it, but it’s still something that I felt could work. Also, of course, being a human is something we all can come back to and do things we love in a very real way; the characters in games are different from characters that are humans, and they’re completely separate from you or your lovedness; you can’t simply “play” them as the real person; they’re real. The game “doesn’t define” this as what you would think an “idle” person should be, but more importantly, it doesn’t define who you are in real life. The game really does make you feel at home; it can help you to be with others and with yourself. However, I do think if we allow this in
At times, it seems as if Henry and Barkley are enveloped in death. In the heart of the first mechanized war, they fall in love. Barkley, a nurse, and Henry, an ambulance driver, care for those confronting death. Barkley acts as a catalyst for Henry. Coping with the death of her fiancй, Barkley instructs Henry through her example. Stoically, Barkley accepts the recent death of her fiancй and with surprising effortlessness continues to persevere. When she speaks of the impact that the death of her fiancй has on their relationship, Barkley simply states, “and that was the end of it of course…” (19) Initially, Barkley’s stoicism bewilders Henry. In truth, she presents him with an effective coping strategy. Given the circumstances of war and the prevalence of death that confronts Barkley and Henry, she offers and models a philosophy, which accepts the inevitability of one’s demise and the need for an intense appreciation of life. Glaring intellect and a clear sense of identity permeates Catherine Barkley’s character, countering the accusation that she is a one-dimensional character, a submissive reflection. Unmistakably, she defines herself as a woman intolerant of manipulation, longing for honesty and fearless.
Some critics have portrayed Barkley as a dependent woman, infatuated with love: “There isn’t any me. I’m you.” (115) and content with pregnancy: “I am having a child and that makes me contented to do nothing” (140). Obviously, she is woman desirous of a relationship, acutely aware of the circumstances in which this love has evolved. She resists her dependence on Henry redefining this dependence throughout the novel. Barkley allows herself to trust Henry; however, she is aware that unlike many couples, they are confronted daily with the possibility of death. Although she appears to need this relationship, she protects herself by controlling her dependency. Henry, on the other hand, is addicted to this relationship because it presents him with a protective structure; he cannot control his dependence on Barkley. Henry’s relationship with Barkley protects him from thinking: “Oh Cat. You don’t know how crazy I am about you” (298). Obsessed with Barkley, Henry has little time to think about the dead and injured he transports. Because his reality is so grim, he prefers to act and depends on Barkley to think. In fact, she has provided